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On the Ins and Outs of Outdoor Education
On Monday, April 1st no prank could prevent the return of beloved Juniata alum Zachary Adams. The 2017 graduate returned to campus to talk to students about his recent experiences working in the field of environmental education. I was very excited for the opportunity to speak to Zach because I also want to pursue environmental education as a bird guide. Before the talk, some of the upperclassmen from the wildlife society hosted Zach for a meet and greet at their house, just off-campus. I was eager to attend! I got to spend the better part of an hour talking to Zach about his time as a student, his career, and his life while also socializing with my fellow wildlifers. To top it all off, we ate pizza from Domino’s!
(more…)Not your average D.C. internship
Having an internship in Washington D.C. was a transformative experience for both my professional and personal development. On January 24th 2018, I arrived at the Washington Center’s Residential and Academic Facility, ready to begin my new internship. Little did I know, my path to finding my perfect internship wouldn’t be the smoothest, but my Juniata education provided me with the resilience and resources I needed to get there.
(more…)Chilling Revelations from a Nobel Laureate
A few weeks ago, Juniata was visited by a very special guest, Dr. Bill Phillips of the Juniata College graduating class of 1970 and one of the 1997 Physics Nobel Laureates. Despite his huge success in his field, Dr. Phillips has not forgotten where he got his start, a small Liberal Arts college nestled in the hills of central Pennsylvania. Dr. Phillips comes back every four years to give talks about physics and to interact with current Physics students, and others as well. I’m sure he has many reasons for why he does come back, but I’d like to think that he mainly does it to inspire younger generations, to instill within them a belief that they can do anything and go anywhere with hard work and the right attitude.
His own attitude is one of positivity and an almost childlike sense of curiosity and fascination with physics, even after a lifetime of in-depth study. His energy and enthusiasm was contagious and I found myself excited for each new physical property that he introduced, despite my small amount of disdain for the field of physics. He bounced from one side of the stage to the other, always talking, his hands always moving as he described the intricacies of time and its relation to the coldest temperature ever recorded. During the talk, I roamed through the crowd and behind his presentation setup taking pictures of his talk. I captured liquid nitrogen being poured, ad libitum, on the floor and up the aisles of the lecture hall and I watched as the 77 Kelvin (really freaking cold) liquid nitrogen shrunk twenty or more fully blown up balloons down to a size small enough to fit them all into a bait bucket approximately one gallon in size.
Smashing frozen solid rubber balls into oblivion on the black concrete floor of Alumni Hall in our very own Brumbaugh Academic Center was cool (pun intended) to watch, but more fascinating was watching the crowd. Each face lit up with excitement as they watched each new demonstration. By far the most interesting faces to watch were those of the professor emeriti, those scholars and teachers that have retired from Juniata, several of whom taught Dr. Phillips when he attended Juniata. Their stoic faces broke into easy smiles with each joke and one was even giddy with excitement with each new revelation of a physical phenomenon. And the best moment of them all was when a water bottle filled with liquid nitrogen and placed under a trashcan, exploded launching the trash can up in the air causing the entire audience to jump and my heart to stop for a few seconds.
Bill Phillips most influential contribution to this campus did not come in his relation of physics to students of his alma mater, but in an answer to a question from a young audience member after his talk had concluded. The student asked what, if anything he would tell his younger self. He answered by telling a story of a time during his junior year at Juniata College when a physics professor from Princeton came to give a talk. During the question and answer portion the Juniata students asked about graduate school and getting into Princeton and the speaker gave the rather flippant answer that no one from Juniata could ever get into Princeton.
Bill Phillips took that information and proceeded to ignore it as he not only applied to Princeton, but also Harvard and MIT. His overarching point with the story was to not let anyone ever sell you short, especially if you are a Juniatian. That really hit home for me as I am now applying to graduate school and worrying if I will get accepted. What I tend to forget is that here at Juniata we are almost over prepared for our futures. If you choose to come to Juniata for the four years of your undergraduate study you are sure to embark on a difficult journey. Fun? Absolutely! Fulfilling? Of course. Difficult? Definitely. But we are better students and people for having gone through those difficult times.
Even if you are not a Juniatian now and even if you never will be. Remember to never let anyone sell you short. Show them what you can do and prove them all wrong. You might be surprised how far you get. Maybe you’ll even win a Nobel Prize.
You can find the video mentioned in this blog at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzESTv7ohhY
Writing Policy for the State Department – visiting U.S. State Department diplomat Scott Kohmel
After meeting Juniata alumni, Scott Kohmel in D.C. the previous year. I became very interested in joining the Foreign Service. Scott works for the U.S. State department and is the Vietnam desk. This is a four year job that he will soon leave to work at an embassy overseas. On his visit to Juniata he discussed how the State Department makes policy and how to write.
A very valuable piece of advice from Scott is that everything that happens in the State Department is based on writing. It is essential to improve your writing ability. The State Department looks for brevity, reading nothing over one double spaced page. Every sentence has to have a point, and it is best to write using as few as possible words. Professor of international politics, Emil Nagengast stated that in his experience students that couldn’t write well also did not read a lot. I am neutral on Professor Nagengast’s statement because I understand that reading does improve your writing syntax; however, struggling with grammar issues and spelling myself I do not believe that reading improves these issues.
As policy was described to me, I did not see much difference between it and some of the papers I write in my politics classes. To draft a policy you have to have an idea, research, and a valid argument that can be put into practice.
Another part of policy is conversation. Scott wanted to highlight that face to face communication is very important for creating a policy. You have to talk to someone in order establish and finalize a policy. This communication develops into negotiations, which are secretive in nature. Scott argues that negotiations should be secretive because the officials who make policy, especially policy with other nations need to be able to talk through the policy and come to a compromise. This compromise will not happen if the public and interest groups are watching and reacting to the negations. The negotiations are where the shaping of the policy is created and allowing these negotiations to be done in secret acts as a massive brain storm see if a win-win situation is achievable. It is important, however, to release the policy to the public in order to get public support. A policy is not very successful unless you have public support.
One thing that Scott stated that stuck with me that I am still trying to analysis is the statement “you cannot let your classes get in the way of your education.” I will leave you to think about that statement as well.
To hear more about Scott, check out this video.
Family and Homecoming Weekend
As you may know, this past weekend was Juniata College’s Family / Homecoming Weekend! So many events were happening on campus: sporting events like football, volleyball, field hockey, and alumni rugby games; a performance of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels by Juniata’s theatre department on Friday and a performance by the Asphalt Orchestra on Saturday; activities like a market place, Club VLB, a class competition, and a book sale to celebrate Beeghly Library’s 50th anniversary; and alumni events like reunions, panels, and more.
On Friday, I attended the English Alumni Career Panel. The four alumni who sat on the panel were great. They were both insightful and friendly and I really enjoyed the hour-long panel and everything else that they had to say after it had formally ended. Later that night, the Juniata Activities Board did a great job of turning the lobby of the von Liebig Center for Science into a club. As an English POE, I usually just go into VLB to get coffee from Jitter’s, but I’m pretty sure that those strobe lights were not always there.
Saturday was a very nice day for a football game. It was a great game, even though we lost. Thanks to the book sale in Beeghly Library, I finally have a copy of The Scarlet Letter and also a third version of The Iliad. Having all the families on campus meant that a lot of parents were able to meet many of their student’s friends.
Prior to coming to Juniata, I noticed that everyone whom I talked to described the Juniata College community by saying “it’s like a family.” One notices that this holds true after a few weeks on campus. However, seeing alumni walk around Juniata, laughing, having a good time, and reminiscing about their time at Juniata is just further testament to the fact.
